Meet Ms Mulberry, CBE: 'We’re not tea and crumpets – we’re bonkers’

Emma Hill, the creative director of one of Britain's best exports can keep a secret - but what's the secret of the brand's global success?

BY Luke Leitch |
20 June 2012

Mulberry is British, sexy and very successful. What it isn't, however, is particularly discreet. For instance, were you to discover the central theme of its Summer 2013 women's collection, every other fashion house would have you locked in a basement (or at the very least a non-disclosure agreement). Not Mulberry.

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To inspire the team, its new multi-million pound Kensington headquarters is full of clues about the new collection - yet the only security measure is a small sign politely requesting you kindly not to spill the beans.

Given this refreshing institutional indiscretion, it is astonishing that when we met two weeks ago, Mulberry's "creative director" (i.e. designer-in-chief) Emma Hill, 42, failed to even mention a secret that only emerged in the Queen's Birthday Honours List last week: Hill has been made a CBE.

Meanwhile, Sarah Burton, who stepped into the breach at Alexander McQueen and then designed the Duchess of Cambridge's wedding dress, was awarded the slightly lesser honour of an OBE.

While Hill's personal profile might not have risen as stratospherically as Burton's, Mulberry's fortunes have rocketed. In 2008, when Hill started the job, Mulberry's shares stood at 111p. Yesterday their value was 1600p, a more than fourteen-fold increase in four recession-hit years - a bigger spike than even Burberry's.

Once our conversational warm-up (subject children: she has one, a son named Hudson) is complete, Hill - whose bracelets jangle as she walks and who wears a frayed denim miniskirt, army jacket and slogan T-shirt - speedily identifies the key elements in Mulberry's recent success.

First, there's that Britishness. Mulberry was founded 41 years ago by Roger Saul in his Somerset garage. It's true that a decade ago he sold out to Christina Ong, a frustratingly reclusive Singaporean billionaire who has masterminded Mulberry's expansion in Asia. And it is also true that many of Mulberry's famous catnip handbags are now produced outside of Britain - often in Turkey. Yet around 30 per cent still come from Somerset. To maintain this ratio, the company is building a new factory next to the old one, which will double capacity and create 300 new jobs.

"Nobody wants a hollow promise, 'we manufacture in England'," says Hill, swivelling on her chair. "My family are bakers and miners, people who make things and do things. I'm hugely proud of the UK and all our craft industries. While everyone else is running to China, we are trying to run away from China because if you say you are an English luxury brand you have to do something about it." Hill thrusts a heavy-knit, oatily toned, bobbily scarf from the Autumn Winter 2012 Collection at me: "All of our hand knits are made by Scottish grannies up in the Highlands. And that's British luxury: it's quirky."

The quirkiness continues into Mulberry's catwalk shows: that winter collection was inspired by Where The Wild Things Are and featured monstrous, goat-hair outerwear, while this summer's collection, shown to a soundtrack of squawking seagulls, was all end-of-the pier, rock-sucking, wind-swept sexiness - a highly idealised version of the British beach holiday (see picture top right). "That collection was based on my family holidays in the 1970s; we used to sit there on the beach in the rain and it was a cracking day out," says Hill.

This is not the only way in which Mulberry is being reinvented in Hill's image. Her description of the company - "We're not tea and crumpets and the Queen-British: we're bonkers and crazy and craft," could just as well apply to her. Not only does she look like she rather likes a party, she does - and that partying has helped Mulberry crack America. From Coachella music festival to New York Fashion Week, the company has for the last few years thrown wild shindigs soundtracked by Hill's favourite bands - Kasabian, The Vaccines, Wild Belle - at which the skinny US It-girl guests, instead of wearing their usual grimace of contractual-obligation, actually appear to have a good time. The ensuing buzz has helped kick-start sales in America.

Another factor has been Hill's early spot and collaboration with Lana Del Rey, the depressing-to-listen-to but exquisite-to-look-at American singer, after whom Hill named the strongly selling Del Ray bag: "We took a classic Fifties shape - that's very her - and what we did to it was very us." That bag follows the Alexa, a girl-ified version of the Mulberry Elkington man-bag that Alexa Chung used to carry, and which is has become one of Mulberry's best-sellers from Seoul to San Francisco.

Until the call came from Mulberry, Hill had been based in the US for years, creating accessories for designers, including Marc Jacobs and Calvin Klein. She confesses a particular admiration for Klein: "The man is a genius. Although it's not really my taste - it's the opposite to Calvin - I was so in awe of his protection of his brand. He controlled everything from the colour of your coffee to what you could have on the back of your chair. In a very different way, ours is a very controlled environment, too."

Aha! This might just be Hill's biggest secret - bigger even than that CBE was when we met. For although she champions an aesthetic that's kooky, sometimes borderline shambolic, and certainly always engagingly a little rough-around-the edges - "One of my most hated things in life is those handbag hooks in restaurants. I just think 'throw it on the floor!'. Or worse, people who wrap suitcases in plastic, urghhh " - Hill can be fiercely fastidious when it matters.

Mulberry has just appointed a new chief executive, Bruno Guillon, who was poached from Hermès. When I ask what she thinks of the French company, Hill says: "No one can touch them in terms of quality. A friend who was working at Hermès said that if there was even the most minor imperfection on a bag they would take it out the back and burn it - no compromise."